Bird supertree project - "Open Source" phylogenetics

Black Browed Albatross
Originally uploaded by QuestingBeast

Today is the day Katie Davis and I are launching the Bird Supertree Project. Partly an effort to distribute the task of building the tree, partly an experiment in "open source phylogenetics", we're curious (if not anxious) to see how this works out. We encourage anybody who is interested in constructing big trees to visit the site, grab the data and have a play. You can upload your results (and see who is the best tree builder), and view the trees using one of the methods for viewing big trees that I mentioned earlier. I'm frantically trying to improve this viewer, so the more trees we get the greater the incentive for me to improve it.